Camera motion or motion of an object in a scene being captured by a solid state imager camera causes motion blur in captured images, especially in low light conditions where exposure time is typically longer than the exposure time for midlevel light conditions. Image stabilization techniques are known and try to address this problem by forcing the camera to operate at a shorter exposure time e.g., a shorter effective shutter speed, for a given scene. With a shorter exposure time, most motion blur can be mitigated or entirely eliminated, producing a relatively motion-blur free captured image.
When the exposure time is shortened, however, the gain applied to the pixel signals of the captured image must be amplified to obtain the same exposure needed to capture the scene. This undesirably amplifies any noise already present in the captured image. Thus, a method and apparatus for stabilizing an image while mitigating noise is desirable.